Blueberries & Flowers
While Mike dug a bunch of holes in the yard yesterday, I helped plant the blueberries as well as a few flowers we picked up from the nursery. Here are some of my notes on our journey with the blueberry plants as well as a look at the flowers I ended up planting. Plus a bonus surprise at the end…
Things to Consider When Planting Blueberries
Blueberries need a certain number of “chill hours” where the temperature gets below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. In the PNW, this can be difficult to achieve, but we found “low chill requirement” blueberries at our local nursery (Sunshine and Bountiful Blue varieties) that should do well in our area.
Blueberries like acidic soil, so we got an “Acid Lovers” mix and mixed it 50/50 with our native soil. (You can see a photo in Mike’s post from yesterday.) Of course, we didn’t actually pH test our soil so… >___< It will be an experiment to say the least.
Blueberry plants should be planted 5 feet apart with 8 feet between rows, so we figured we could plant them 4 feet away from our house and around 5 feet away from each other.
It’s also recommended to cover the planting area with 2-4 inches of mulch to help prevent weeds. We had short blueberry bushes, so we ended up doing maybe 1-2 inches of mulch. Apparently you can increase the amount of mulch over time as they grow taller.
The first year after planting, it’s better to remove the blueberry flower buds so the plant’s energy can go into growing and establishing roots. This means no blueberries the first year! So after we finished planting and mulching, I tried to remove as many of the existing blueberry buds that I could. This took… a really long time. And I don’t think I got all of them. ^^;; I’m going to give it a second check next weekend.
Blueberries also have a few varieties of fungus, etc, that they are prone to. Unfortunately the plant closest to the fence seems like it might have one of them… More investigation will be needed here…
Marigolds & Lavender
When we got to the nursery, Mike so kindly reminded me that I had wanted to look at flowers. So I ended up getting 4 marigold plants and a lavender plant.
When I was a lot younger, I used to help my grandma and my mom plant flowers, so I’ve planted marigolds before. This time, I mixed the plants in with our strawberries to hopefully encourage bees when the time is right. It might be a tad too early to have planted them, but hopefully they’ll do okay.
I also planted some lavender in a terracotta pot. I’ve never grown lavender before, but I love lavender flavored things, so perhaps I’ll have to figure out what to do with it if it actually grows. :3 The lavender flowers should also encourage pollinators once they bloom.
Surprise Lettuce!
At the end of the day, after finishing planting the blueberries, I noticed some lettuce popping up! I’ve been checking the beds very closely every day to see if any of the seeds were doing anything, so I was really excited when I finally saw some of these little seedlings. 😀
It’s hard to tell if this is “Row 1” lettuce or “Row 2” lettuce, though… Perhaps we should have marked them better. XD Hopefully the other row will also start popping up, too, otherwise we may never know which one this is. Either way, the little lettuce seedlings seem happy so far. A good way to end the second planting day!